Tuesday, September 6, 2016

H.E.A.T. Framework Strategies

The H.E.A.T Framework provides a context to assess student learning experiences at the operational curriculum level and offers a practical set of descriptors for classroom walkthroughs, peer coaching/mentoring interventions, and lesson plan evaluations. By turning up the H.E.A.T., students are given the chance to apply or transfer critical content to contextual situations that involve high levels of engagement, critical thinking, and increased relevance. The result is improved student academic achievement as well as improved teaching and learning.

Since collaboration allows us to work together toward the achievement of the common goal of improving teaching and learning, the LoTi team encourages everyone to participate in our social media discussions with new ideas using the Online LoTi Classroom, Facebook, Twitter, and the LoTi Guy Speaks Blog. We welcome your participation in the discussions by completing one or more of the posted strategies. If possible, implement the strategies in your classroom. If you do not have a classroom, find a classroom that you can work with or try implementing one of the strategies in a professional learning session or meeting that you attend. Use #HEATFramework to connect your post to the overall discussion. Let's build a list of H.E.A.T. Strategies that makes classroom planning more effective.

H- Higher Order Thinking Strategy

Teaching Students to Ask Better Questions

Since it is critical that students increase their capacity for higher level thinking and questioning while still learning the content, teachers need to explore multiple strategies in their classroom. Let's explore sample strategies aimed at promoting higher level thinking and questioning in the classroom. Use the H.E.A.T. Lesson Plan Scoring Guide as a reference when choosing a strategy.

59 comments:

Try to avoid yes or no questions... student should have to process and perform at higher level blooms taxonomy levels in order to answer a question. These would be useful when structuring LEQs for students to answer as indicators of learning material or assessments of progression toward content mastery

When students are able to apply their own knowledge and/or opinions from the start, they often take ownership of the content material and become more engaged throughout the lesson. As a teacher, it is important to ask questions that students can not only relate to, but can then lead to higher level thinking.

Using the terms from Bloom's higher level of thinking as question starters can help student develop higher level questions. I can use these question starters in my classroom to address answering an LEQ or UEQ.

As a learning support teacher, my students struggle with asking questions other than, "What do I do? I don't know what to do next." My challenge is trying to get my students to ask questions that help me gauge what they're struggling with so I can adjust my instruction accordingly.

The one video clip showed students using the Frayer Model. Often in biology we use this model with vocabulary not only to introduce words, but also to show examples and non-examples of the word. This could lead to higher level thinking and assist with sentence starters for students.

Higher-Order Thinking skills are essential in Science. Students need to learn the process of the Scientific Method. Learn by solving a problem by asking a question and move to forming a hypothesis to eventually drawing a conclusion about the data being collected. By allowing students to work through the scientific method, they naturally will achieve a higher order thinking skills.

I find it difficult to use question starters in my learning support math class because my students need a lot of prompting. However, my students can work through shorter or broken down questions. The questions work better near the end of my class after the lesson.

Question starters are a great way to create meaningful classroom discussions. Sometimes when a teacher tells students to turn and answer a question with their partner, they may not know what to say or what questions to ask. This causes the students to become off task. Question starters give them ideas to use, so they do not get stuck and give up on the discussion. After using the questions starters, the teacher can better guide a whole group discussion because the students will be better prepared to participate. One challenge a teacher may face is taking the extra time to come up with the questions. A solution for this is after the teacher creates the question starts a few times, students can start creating the questions starters because they now know the expectations.

During my year of self-directed evaluation, I really focused on higher order questioning. The biggest challenge that I faced was that students do not know how to think at higher levels. During my planning of each lesson, I scripted questions that I wanted to ask students as well as an estimate of the wait time that I need to allow for students to actually think about the question and develop an appropriate answer. I found that I had to build up the number of questions throughout the year in order to encourage my students to think at those higher levels. I was able to start with 1 or 2 questions a week and work up to incorporating 1 or 2 questions on my assessment and students were able to successfully provide answers. This was a year-long process that took time and effort, I do not know how I would have shortened this process. I believe that most students can get through school without having to think for themselves and as a result, they have never been asked to think at higher levels.

Question starters are a great way to create meaningful classroom discussions. Sometimes when a teacher tells students to turn and answer a question with their partner, they may not know what to say or what questions to ask. This causes the students to become off task. Question starters give them ideas to use, so they do not get stuck and give up on the discussion. After using the questions starters, the teacher can better guide a whole group discussion because the students will be better prepared to participate. One challenge a teacher may face is taking the extra time to come up with the questions. A solution for this is after the teacher creates the question starts a few times, students can start creating the questions starters because they now know the expectations.

Question starters should incorporate ways that students can use their prior knowledge and allow them to be able to lead to discussions where application and analysis of the problem can be done. If students feel invested in the lesson they will be more engaged and more likely to participate.

Higher order thinking skills are a developed skill that many 7th and 8th graders lack. Therefore, they would have difficulty even having the ability to recognize a thought provoking question, let alone a desire to produce them. In addition to even using the question starters they would also still need an incentive to produce a challenging question. To raise the base questions to a HEAT level temperature, there would need to be a competitive or challenging edge to the assigned task. Maybe even a stump the student type of challenge.

Higher order thinking skills are a developed skill that many 7th and 8th graders lack. Therefore, they would have difficulty even having the ability to recognize a thought provoking question, let alone a desire to produce them. In addition to even using the question starters they would also still need an incentive to produce a challenging question. To raise the base questions to a HEAT level temperature, there would need to be a competitive or challenging edge to the assigned task. Maybe even a stump the student type of challenge.

Guidelines to consider as I create question starters for my students should potentially lead to opportunities for students to design. We can use "How Might We" questions to guide our student's innovative thinking. We can also use verb starters such as describe and explain in our question starters. Challenges with question starters may involve making questions too narrow or too broad. These challenges may hinder a student's design opportunity.

I like to start with just posting a question and asking "How would you solve this problem? Be creative!" and then ask my students to work with a partner to develop a "blueprint" to solve the challenge. We did this with mystery numbers...what two mystery numbers add to 9. My students graphed their number pairs on a huge post it note grid using neon circle stickers. They realized that the dots created a line, and the lesson taught itself

What challenges would you face in utilizing question starters?In higher level math, many times students do not know the context in which the new material will be applied. In order to have students apply material correctly, students may have to be given initial insight into an application and then be asked to extend their knowledge to ask questions on how the math concept can be applied to the real-life application

I think one of the challenges I face in having the students create questions is with my lower-level students. They seem to have a difficult time formulating questions. I think that by the time this level student is in high-school they are so used to being told how to do a problem that they are not comfortable creating questions. I agree that it would increase the HEAT to have this level be able to create question starters, but I am not sure exactly how I can work them towards this goal.

I think giving the students a verb choice they have to use in the question would help getting them to make better questions. I would just be happy to have them asked a question. Being a back seat learning is not effective.

Higher order thinking is an essential skill for the students to use in a math class. The students need to be able to apply the concepts we have learned in different situations. By forming questions that do not have a yes or no answer, it will require the students to think at a deeper level. By asking questions that are slightly broader with multiple correct answers, the students will have to think before responding. It is very important to use an appropriate amount of wait time before listening to the students’ responses. This will allow every student to have time to process and think about the question.

Guidelines that I must consider when creating starter questions for my students would be the student's level in my 6th grade classes. I have to remember that along with my gifted students I also have students functioning at a 1st grade level and I would need questoins that they all could understand.

Tying in the real life situations is a great way to engage the students and also show community involvement. It is often difficult to have our students understand where they fit into real life situations, income, family dynamics, etc. Bringing these problems to them and allowing them to discuss can open new doors and more discussions.

The use of a Frayer Diagram allows students to organize their thoughts and set the groundwork for them to enter into higher level thinking and questioning. This is something I currently utilize in my teaching and will continue to do so.

I love starting lessons with a problem and ask the kids to use their schema to to try and solve it. It's interesting to see how some students apply previous learning in new and innovative ways. I really enjoy watching the kids then go back midway through the lesson to make another attempt at answering the question.

I love the concept of "not raising hands!" I admit that I tend to call on the same students too often. Part of that is my fear of making students fear "being questioned" when they already have a math phobia. I need to make sure they know that I value their questions whether they love math or not. I will definitely use these strategies to get more students to ask questions because I know this is very important to increasing the HEAT in my classroom.

The biggest challenge that I have when utilizing starter questions is that the same few students tend to take control of the discussion. The other students do not seem comfortable to engage in answering questions that they are unsure of if they do not know the answer. If I call on other students that do not have their hands raised, they either stare at me or just say, "I don't know." and refuse to answer.

What guidelines must you consider when creating question starters with your students? TYPE OF LEARNERS ARE IN YOUR CLASSROOM AS WELL AS THE ABILITY LEVELS OF YOUR LEARNERSHow could you utilize question starters in your classroom? IN SMALL GROUPS TO START CONVERSATIONS ABOUT A SET TOPICWhat challenges would you face in utilizing question starters? AS STATED EARLIER, TYPE OF LEARNERS, ABILITY LEVELS, AS WELL AS, IF THEY ARE TALKERS OR LISTENERS.Do you have other resources or ideas you would suggest for educators exploring ways of fostering student-generated questions? AS STATED EARLIER, A PREP ACTIVITY THAT HELPS STUDENTS GENERATE BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE ON A TOPIC TO BE DISCUSSED. IT HELPS DISCUSSIONS WHEN STUDENTS HAVE A KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE TOPIC.

Question starters can be difficult with students when introducing new material when there is little to know prior knowledge. I do think active questioning is a great method of higher-order thinking and can be very beneficial to learning.

When trying to get different students to answer questions (instead of those few who always want to answer), it at times slows the class down. I have had students who will literally just stare at me when I ask them a question knowing that if they wait me out then they won't have to say anything.

When trying to get different students to answer questions (instead of those few who always want to answer), it at times slows the class down. I have had students who will literally just stare at me when I ask them a question knowing that if they wait me out then they won't have to say anything.

These questions should play a key role in the learningprocess. Because of this, we as teachers need to plan ourquestions carefully. This doesn't mean script writing; thatwould negate creative teaching. What you are saying is weneed to carefully plan our questions by thinking throughpossible questions which would guide the students towardfurther investigation and a deeper understanding of theconcepts being stressed .

Agreed. And modeling meaningful annotations through "think-alouds" really helps kids get past just making marks on a text. Used consistently, annotation is a great comprehension tool that also helps generate questions.-T. Funke

I agree that the HEAT framework can be a very effective method of engaging students in higher level thinking. I'm still struggling with engaging lower level students who are reading significantly below their grade level.

Teaching Students to Ask Better Questions - Using the college-board format, I teach students to generate their own short answer, long essay, and document-based questions. They have to generate the question and then assign the question to a classmate.

Age and prior knowledge of the student will influence the types of questions students can handle. With my older students I agree that questioning can be a very useful tool, but with my young students sometimes questioning gets them so off topic and they need more of a focus before they are ready to ask questions.

In order to gauge the opinions of the entire class, I will occasionally have students ask yes or no questions (even though they are not higher level thinker). However, this allows me to have the rest of the students close their eyes and answer the question with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. I can then see which students are struggling based on their answers. It's a good way to occasionally assess all of my students at one time.

Using starter questions is great tool to gain pre assessment for a new unit of instruction. Using questions that cover the learning objectives is also a great way to see if your students have any prior knowledge of the content.

Creating questions can be challenging for students. I see in with my own children when they attempt to talk to our smart speaker. I often have to say to them, think about the question you are asking and what answer you will get. You need to ask the right question. They should include details from their prior knowledge.

When students are taught how to question and ask appropriate questions, they are innately taking their thinking to a higher level. This skill will not only serve them well in the classroom, but will also have real world relevancy as they progress through life.

Higher order thinking skills are essential for life, not just in our classrooms. If students are taught how to think critically and solve real world problems, they will become more engaged learning. Using question starters shows teachers what students already and know and allows students to activate prior knowledge and think about their thinking.

Using question starters give the students the opportunity to think about their thinking. They need to know what they already know, what they want to know, and what they want to learn. When I use question starters, I use them to make my students get an idea of what they are going to be doing that day.

Using sentence starters to get students to ask deeper questions is a great tool; however, I think that these should be modeled, because there are still multiple levels of these starters. It is the teacher's responsibility to make sure that an 11th grade student has a deeper analysis than a 7th grade student. Simply having the students choose one of the starters is not an adequate way to get students to meaningfully connect, analyze, evaluate etc.

Allowing the students to make the questions as they read gives them more ownership of their learning. I like the idea of giving them the verbs to create the questions because it helps the students who have trouble getting started.

Allowing the students to make the questions as they read gives them more ownership of their learning. I like the idea of giving them the verbs to create the questions because it helps the students who have trouble getting started.

I use question starters while students are analyzing fiction. I provide examples from every level of Bloom's. Initially, they may use questions from the lower levels, but then I require students to use questions from the top three levels.